https://hdl.handle.net/2123/23273 Mon, 15 Jun 2026 14:42:35 GMT 2026-06-15T14:42:35Z https://ses.library.usyd.edu.au:443/bitstream/id/13827924-9bd6-4411-bd01-8c45670f9f1c/ https://hdl.handle.net/2123/23273 https://hdl.handle.net/2123/23274 Gardens of History and Imagination: Growing New South Wales [front matter] Poiner, Gretchen; Jack, Sybil Whether on the ground or in the mind gardens carry meaning. They reflect social and aesthetic values and may express hope, anticipation or grief. Throughout history they have provided a means of physical survival. In creating and maintaining gardens people construe and construct a relationship with their environment. But there is no single meaning carried in the word ‘garden’: as idea and practice it reflects cultural differences in beliefs, values and social organisation. It embodies personal, community even national ways of seeing and being in the world. There are ten essays in this book, each of which examines the role of gardens and gardening in the settlement of New South Wales and in growing a colony and a state. They explore the significance of gardens for the health of the colony, for its economy, for the construction of social order and for personal identity. For the immigrants gardening was an act of settlement and also a statement of possession. For a long time it was with memories of ‘home’, often selective and idealised, that settlers made gardens but as the colony developed its own character so did gardening possibilities and practices. Fri, 01 Jan 2016 00:00:00 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/2123/23274 2016-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/23275 Gardens, landscapes, wilderness: ways of seeing ourselves Macdonald, Gaynor In 1992 I was travelling with Japanese university students through western New South Wales, heading for Alice Springs. The houses, street lights and electricity poles were far behind and the only sign of human presence was the bitumen road, stretching as far as the eye could see. One young woman confided she was getting frightened at the emptiness. I realised she might become more so when we reached the inland with its vast expanses of red sand stretching to the horizon. I sat with her, explaining how Aboriginal people would see this landscape. For them it could not be uninhabited, wild or remote. They were connected to every tree and hill, brought into being by the same spirits who brought them into being. What looked alienating to her was intimate to them, albeit a different intimacy from that of a Japanese garden. By the time we reached the desert she could celebrate seeing a landscape through a different cultural lens. I found myself asking questions about these differences. Fri, 01 Jan 2016 00:00:00 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/2123/23275 2016-01-01T00:00:00Z